Not every dream is good. Sometimes dreams terrify you to your core, and you wake up in a cold sweat confused to find yourself safe in bed. In Session 8, we turn our attention to “Nightmare?,” from gun violence to the state of the climate. But it’s not all doom and gloom — the speakers in this session offer real ways forward.
Recaps of the...

We can’t have an honest reckoning about race until we start to recognize all the ways in which privilege and prejudice creep into our lives, says author and digital strategist Luvvie Ajayi.
There comes a time in every upwardly mobile Black person’s life when they encounter someone who tells them how “well-spoken” and “articulate” they are. It i...

About this event: A Sense of Wonder: Time to Think Again
Roger Cook
I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing
Roger performed for TEDxNashville one of his first global hits on the very instrument he created the song. “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” was one of the first viral hits to ever span the globe and touched the lives of millions. He reminisced about...

The phrase “truth or dare” is a false binary -- facing the truth often requires daring action, and vice versa. That’s why, at TED2015: Truth and Dare, the two go hand-in-hand. TED2015 happens March 16-20 in Vancouver and Whistler, and we dare to think this will be the most provocative, invigorating, mind-shifting TED yet.
The 58 speakers on o...

By Kate Torgovnick, Morton Bast, Thu-Huong Ha
The future. When it comes down to it, it's not about flying cars, flashy robots, jetpacks, or awesome sunglasses. It's about the little things we can do to advance healthcare, better education, create opportunities, improve connections between each other, and make lives just a little bit easie...

In March 2018, activists T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison hiked the path that Harriet Tubman took to freedom nearly 170 years ago. Their journey was both painful and beautiful, demanding and transcendent. Here are some lessons from their long walk.
“When Black women walk, things change.”
T. Morgan Dixon, cofounder of GirlTrek, had Harrie...

From tech to self-help via poetry, fiction and graphic novels, here are the books you need to read.
What’s the one book you're always thrilled to discover that someone else has read? We posed that question to TED speakers -- and, well, they geeked out, offering us a list of hidden gems that wouldn’t typically crop up on a holiday shopping list....

Linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker's talk at the end of TED2018 Session 1 argued enthusiastically that humanity has, as a whole, made remarkable progress toward prosperity, peace and happiness — backing up his assertions with charts that showed an optimistic trajectory. But is that the whole story? A roundtable of TED Fellows — includin...

In 2009, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published the book The Spirit Level, making a bold case that economic inequality within a society, the size of the gap between rich and poor, has corrosive effects from the bottom of society right up to the top. Wilkinson spoke about their book and research this summer at TEDGlobal ...

To commence TED Fellows Session 2, multi-hyphenate Paul Rucker takes the stage with his cello. (Spoiler alert: you will see him later in this writeup showcasing another artform.) Inspired by his mother, who learned to play the organ through a mail-order course, Rucker taught himself how to play this instrument. But right here on the TED Fell...

Why is it that, when we talk about sexual violence and domestic abuse, we talk about the women involved and erase the men from the conversation?In his TED talk, violence-prevention educator Jackson Katz explains why sentences like “Mary is a battered woman” are far more common than ones like “John beat Mary." The takeaway of Katz’s talk: Tha...

Need a dose of literary oomph and inspiration? Here's a selection of uplifting reads -- all suggested by TED speakers -- for your end-of-year break.
When you get snowed -- or rained -- in
Take This Stallion by Anaïs Duplan
An hour with this book will change even the pitch of your internal thoughts, as poet Duplan reshapes it with her vivid a...

After his mainstage talk on the opening night of TED, psychologist Steven Pinker sat down with Chris Anderson to dive into his new book, Enlightenment Now. The two examined some criticisms of the book and the thesis behind it, dug into the data, and then threw the floor open for questions, in a session that offered the luxury of time to real...

Here's a TED first: an animated Socratic dialog! In a time when irrationality seems to rule both politics and culture, has reasoned thinking finally lost its power? Watch as psychologist Steven Pinker is gradually, brilliantly persuaded by philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein that reason is actually the key driver of human moral progress, eve...

With his signature resolve, former US President Jimmy Carter dives into three unexpected reasons why the mistreatment of women and girls continues in so many manifestations in so many parts of the world, both developed and developing. The final reason he gives? "In general, men don't give a damn."

For centuries, we believed the Earth was flat, that the sun rotated around the Earth. These were absolute truths, until ... they weren't. Which of our accepted truths will fall apart in the years ahead? Financier-turned-philosopher Yannick Roudaut believes we're on the cusp of another historical reckoning -- and another renaissance.

Whether your weeks ahead contain travel, vacations or just longer and lazier days than usual, our list of recommendations from TED speakers has books for all moods, activities and tastes.
When you want to understand why we humans do what we do
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (TED Talk: Our buggy...

John Legend is on a mission to transform America's criminal justice system. Through his Free America campaign, he's encouraging rehabilitation and healing in our prisons, jails and detention centers -- and giving hope to those who want to create a better life after serving their time. With a spoken-word prelude from James Cavitt, an inmate at Sa...

In the ongoing debate over refugees, we hear from everyone -- from politicians who pledge border controls to citizens who fear they'll lose their jobs -- everyone, that is, except migrants themselves. Why are they coming? Journalist and TED Fellow Yasin Kakande explains what compelled him and many others to flee their homelands, urging a more op...

Here's a huge list of TED speaker-recommended books, with all the diversity of titles and topics you might expect. No matter your mood, preference or occasion, we’ve got you covered.
When you’re lying in the sun
Any book by Isaac Asimov
I have stacks of collections of science-fiction short stories. I grab these before getting on a long f...

According to the US Department of Education, more than 85 percent of black fourth-grade boys aren't proficient in reading. What kind of reading experiences should we be creating to ensure that all children read well? In a talk that will make you rethink how we teach, educator and author Alvin Irby explains the reading challenges that many black ...

How can humans be so compassionate and altruistic -- and also so brutal and violent? To understand why we do what we do, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky looks at extreme context, examining actions on timescales from seconds to millions of years before they occurred. In this fascinating talk, he shares his cutting edge research into the biology th...

An art school professor once told Deb Willis that she, as a woman, was taking a place from a good man -- but the storied photographer says she instead made a space for a good man, her son Hank Willis Thomas. In this moving talk, the mother and son artists describe how they draw from one another in their work, how their art challenges mainstream ...

From our fear of women's bodies to our sheepishness around the word "nipple," our ideas about sex need an upgrade, say sex educators (and hilarious women) Tiffany Kagure Mugo and Siphumeze Khundayi. For a radical new take on sex positivity, the duo take the TED stage to suggest we look to Africa for erotic wisdom both ancient and modern, showing...

Over the last year, Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo traveled to all 50 US states, collecting personal stories about race and intersectionality. Now they're on a mission to equip every American with the tools to understand, navigate and improve a world structured by racial division. In a dynamic talk, Vulchi and Guo pair the personal stories they've ...

If you've watched the news or followed politics, chances are you've heard the term Orwellian thrown around in one context or another. But have you ever stopped to think about what it really means, or why it's used so often? Noah Tavlin dissects the term.

How can Africa, the home to some of the largest bodies of water in the world, be said to have a water crisis? It doesn't, says Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò -- it has a knowledge crisis. Táíwò suggests that lack of knowledge on important topics like water and food is what stands between Africa's current state and a future of prosperity. In a powerful t...

After the French Revolution erupted in 1789, Europe was thrown into chaos. Neighboring countries' monarchs feared they would share the fate of Louis XVI and attacked the new Republic, while at home, extremism and mistrust between factions led to bloodshed. In the midst of all this conflict, Napoleon emerged. But did he save the revolution, or de...